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This is an inexpensive shou that Life in Teacup is selling at $1/15 g. sample in order to introduce pu’erh to the public. Toward that end, the name is appropriate and kind of cool and made me interested in trying it.

The tea itself is…not that exciting. It’s similar to other inexpensive shous I’ve tried that are advertised as “easy to drink” teas for new pu’erh drinkers. It smells and tastes overwhelmingly like hay, making me feel like I’m on a hayride or in a horse barn. This doesn’t appeal to me. I think whenever I get through the pu’erh samples I currently have on hand, I’ll go for slightly better quality than I have so far. Increasing each steep by 15 seconds, you get tons of hay tea infusions, which is… Bleh. The complexity I’m told pu’erh brings to the tea world is conspicuously absent. I guess it’s true that it’s easy to drink in the sense that it’s mild and doesn’t have any particularly offensive flavors. Just not exciting.

Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the sample from Life in Teacup. They’re a cool company to order samples from. I think I just bought this one sample for $1.00 and and paid shipping, and they shipped me 3 oolong tea samples (which were really what I wanted in the order). I would not recommend or buy this. I’m thinking my strategy of starting out on communist tea is a bit misguided — next time I shop for pu’erh, I’ll go for middle-range prices and higher quality.

I don’t know that I’d say I recommend it per se. It’s certainly worth the dollar charge that got me all the other free samples. I wouldn’t advocate buying more than the sample size though.